Eve Ewing
Eve Louise Ewing is a sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago. Ewing is an assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes the 2018 book Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago, Illinois. She is a former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches. In 2019, she published 1919 a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. In addition, she is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered around young heroine, Riri Williams.
Early life
Ewing grew up in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Her mother worked as a radio reporter and producer and her father an artist.Ewing attended Northside College Preparatory High School, then the University of Chicago for college. She earned an MAT in Elementary Education from Dominican University and taught middle school Language Arts in Chicago public schools before moving to Boston where she earned an M.Ed in Education Policy and Management, then a doctorate from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.
Career
Writing
Ewing's writing includes poetry, prose and journalism, in addition to her academic scholarship. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Pamet River Prize for a first or second full-length book of poetry or prose by a female-identified or genderqueer author. ProPublica named her Seven Scribes article on the fight to save Chicago State University to its list of "The Best MuckReads on America’s Troubled History With Race" and at The Huffington Post, Zeba Blay named Ewing's essay on Joshua Beal's death to a list of "30 Of The Most Important Articles By People Of Color In 2016." At NPR, Gene Demby praised Ewing's "moving essay...about the fight over the future of Dyett High in Chicago." In Chicago Magazine in 2017, Adam Morgan described her as one of the city's "most visible cultural icons."Ewing has also drawn notice for her commentary on subjects like colorism, school choice, federal arts funding, Frank Ocean and Harper Lee, race in publishing and in visual culture. Ewing's Twitter account, operated as "Wikipedia Brown", drew 30 million views a month as of September 2017.
Ewing serves on the editorial board for In These Times, as co-director of arts organization Crescendo Literary, and as co-founder of the Echo Hotel poetry collective with Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib.
''Electric Arches''
Ewing's first book, a collection of poetry, prose and visual art entitled Electric Arches, was published by Haymarket Books on September 12, 2017. Ewing has stated the entire book is based on real incidents that have happened to her.Publishers Weekly named Electric Arches one of its most anticipated books of the fall of 2017, calling it a "stunning debut" and The Paris Review selected it as a staff pick of the week on September 1, 2017, saying Ewing writes "trenchantly and tenderly" with "conversational...verse lulling the reader into territory that feels familiar, even when it isn't—into a world of 'Kool cigarette green,' 'lime popsicles,' and 'promised light.'" Writing in the Pacific Standard, Elizabeth King described Electric Arches as "at once a portrait of home, a tender letter to black youth, and a call to her audience to think beyond the confines of systemic racism." The book won a 2018 Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association, the Chicago Review of Books 2017 poetry award, and the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award.
Comics
Ewing is the current writer of the Marvel series Ironheart, the first issue of which was published November 2018. She has also written for Ms. Marvel and Marvel Team-Up.1919
1919 is a collection of poems and children's songs based on the stoning and resulting drowning of Eugene Williams in Lake Michigan and the ensuing Chicago race riot of 1919.1919 uses excerpts from "", a text commissioned by the city of Chicago and written in the aftermath of the riots as an attempt to understand how and why the events occurred and what could be done to ensure that race riots would never again occur. Excerpts from "The Negro in Chicago" are used at the top of Ewing's poems to provide additional context to her words. 1919 was published in 2019 and was selected on NPRScholarship
Ewing's academic research focuses on school closures. She earned a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writing a dissertation on school closures in Chicago entitled "Shuttered Schools in the Black Metropolis: Race, History, and Discourse on Chicago’s South Side." Her book on school closures, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, was released in October 2018 University of Chicago Press. Ghosts in the Schoolyard examines the demise of public schools in Chicago's Bronzeville district after the demolition of public housing, and analyzes community efforts to keep the schools open, including a community-wide hunger strike. In the book Ewing introduces a concept called institutional mourning, which refers to the multiple negative impacts experienced by the residents of areas where schools have been closed. According to The Chicago Reader, "she finds that school closures are a form of publicly sanctioned violence that not only derails black children's futures but also erases a community's past."Ewing was a Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago, then became assistant professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago in 2018.
Visual art
In addition to her writing and research, Ewing is a visual artist and in 2016 became the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Boston Children's Museum. Her installation "A Map Home" explored place and childhood exploration. The project became the subject of a short film by Rene Dongo and an episode of Coorain Lee's webseries, Coloring Coorain!Ewing has also served as program and community manager at the Urbano Project, a youth arts and activism project in Boston.
Podcast
Ewing launched a podcast called Bughouse Square in October 2018. Using archival footage of oral historian Studs Terkel in the beginning of each episode, Ewing then interviews a guest in a conversation with parallel themes. According to broadwayworld.com, "Compelling guest commentary and host insights bring to life the most provocative and compelling topics from Terkel's day and ours, and the series includes recorded conversations with such seminal figures as James Baldwin, Shel Silverstein, and Lorraine Hansberry, plus new exchanges with professors, authors, and cultural critics."Awards and recognition
- 2019 Best Books of 2019, NPR
- 2019 Notable Books of 2019, Chicago Tribune
- 2019 Best Poetry Book of 2019, Chicago Review of Books
- 2019 Best Books by Women of Summer 2019, O Magazine
- 2019 Must-Read Poetry of June 2019, The Millions
- 2019 Most Anticipated Reads of Summer 2019, LitHub
- 2018 Alex Award, Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association
- 2017 Top Ten Books of the Year, Chicago Tribune
- 2017 CPL Top 10 Best Best Books of the Year, Chicago Public Library
- 2017 Best Poetry Book, Chicago Review of Books
- 2016–2017 Distinguished Dissertation Award, American Educational Research Association
Personal life